The Prodigal Son
by anticollision
Summary: 放蕩息子 …Uchiha Itachi. He wasn't evil; he wasn't pure. This is how, on that fated night, his story began. /And thus the prodigy became a prodigal./
1. one by one

**blanket disclaimer:** i do not own naruto.  
><strong>title:<strong> the prodigal son  
><strong>author:<strong> anticollision

**summary: **Uchiha Itachi. He wasn't evil; he wasn't pure. This is how, on that fated night, his story began. /And thus the prodigy became a prodigal./  
><strong>characters:<strong> itachi. and sasuke, i suppose. (no pairings, btw.)**  
><strong>**genre:** angst. tragedy. family.

**ramblings: **so, i should be working on "clay hearts" some more... but i'm not right now. this whole prodigal son thing is a short series of drabbles. like, i have five/six chapters. yep. (here's a little fact: orignally, i was going to make a super long oneshot and do itachi's pov on it. but i was lazy.). I ANGSTED THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE WRITING PROCESS. SRSLY.

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><p><strong>o1.<strong> _one by one they fall, like dominoes, and it was all your fault, all your doing—and i will never forgive you._

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><p>Red, red—everywhere, <em>red<em>! Close eyes, see red; open them and see red. Crimson consumed the compound.

Itachi plunged his _red_ katana into his cousin's heart without ever looking away. After the first twenty or so, he got used to it: the idea of killing his own kin. Not that he completely agreed to it, of course—it was an abysmal thought.

However, it was all his mission. And it was already set in stone years before his birth. He just wished that someone could reverse the fated curse. (But it was too late now, years upon years too late).

The saddest thing about it all was that they were too stunned at first to fully fight back—the ones that actually were up at the time, most of them were asleep already. He would emerge with a bloody blade in hand and a look in his eye that they knew said, _"You're next."_

_(((if only they could see the look he had that said, "__i'm sorry,__" when he took their lives.)))_

A chakra flicker that he immediately recognized coming into the household: _Sasuke_. He was there, and the young mass-murderer was already heading for their parents' bedroom, for all the others had been eliminated.

Breathe in; breathe out.

Yes, that was what he told himself. Take it one step at a time, one kill at a time, one relative at a time. Oh, gods. No matter what he might say in the future, he had loved these people. (Well, a good handful of them, at least.) It was in his nature to do so.

Uchiha Itachi was not always a hard-hearted man.

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><p><strong>ramblings2:<strong> btw, go check out "the happily ever after chronicles" by _prismatically inked_. D /shameless advert


	2. a million more

**rambling:** this chapter switches back in time for a short period. the next chapter will return to normal. though, really, all the chapters are jumpy—but in order. i dedicate this chapter to my flashdrive. because i just found it. (i thought i had lost you foreverrrrr. /sobsobsob)

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><p><strong>o2.<strong> _and if i tell you a secret, will you keep it? because there's a million more i've got to tell you._

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><p>"Uchiha Itachi, it's <em>time<em>."

He knew what that meant. It was a word so easily spoken, but a thought so perverse. It was time for him initiate what would be known so merely as the Uchiha Massacre.

The boy of only thirteen years—

_(((so young, __too__ young)))_

—walked forward, his ears keen on listening to the last minute mission details. One would think before you slaughter off your relatives, your mind would be a million miles away. No, not Itachi's. His mind was more focused than he had ever known it to be. It almost sickened him for that fact.

The old man before him nodded once, stern and steady. "It's time to make things right," he murmured to himself before he dismissed the _child_ to participate in a top-ranked mission to eradicate his entire family.

Itachi ambled away. His own self thinking and talking about it was one thing, but having someone else conversing about the soon-to-be carnage of your own blood was an another thing entirely.

For once in a long time, his heart hurt—not because a kunai was lodged dangerously close inside his chest or because he was infected with a literal heart-stopping poison. But because tonight was the last time he'd be a free man, the last time he'd be a Konoha citizen, the last time he'd see his family (before he killed them all), the last time that he'd be little Sasuke's brother.

It wasn't fair, he bemoaned. However, life as a shinobi never exactly was.


	3. all that we've ever known

**ramblings:** i'm bored, so i'm updating this. oh, i couldn't find the dialogue of the uchiha massacre. just a warning. AND THE LONG TITLE THINGS BELOW MAKE THE STORY TEN TIMES MORE DRAMATIC. YEAH. SO TRUE.

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><p><strong>o3.<strong> _and tonight we kill all that we've been nursing, all that we've been living by, all that we've ever known._

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><p>It came all too easily, all too naturally for him. No child should be able to kill their own father so simply. As the katana slashed across the older man's chest, Itachi winced, but he did not lull. But when it came to his mother, his lovely mother, as she awoke and screamed—<p>

_(((but no one was there to hear—not anymore)))_

—he paused. That very woman had nursed him, helped him to live, and was the one who brought him life. How could one slay his own mother? (He couldn't.) Itachi stared straight into her dark eyes and put her in a deep sleep with his swirling-black-and-red orbs. Then, he stabbed his blade through his mother's heart.

At least she died without pain. (But it still didn't help that dull aching in his chest and the guilty conscious that shouted his sins against her—against all of them.) However, he knew that there was one more he had to take care of.

"Nii-san…? _Why_?" came a little, bewildered voice from the entryway.

_Oh, gods, if you do exist, help me now,_ the older brother prayed silently before he stepped out of the shadows, revealing himself fully. All the blood, on his weapon and his clothes, shown. The look in his crimson eyes that appeared malevolent, but were honestly terror-filled in that moment, exposed what had happened:

The acclaimed son had killed his august parents. And now his young brother, the only one he truly treasured here, was before him—and he just _knew_.

—Sasuke wasn't the only one who would never be the same that night.


	4. our undoing

**ramblings:** i should be posting chapter thirty-six of clay hearts. but, noooooo.

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><p><strong>o4.<strong>_ never will we be the same, not you, not i—this is our undoing._

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><p><em>This never should have had to happened,<em> Itachi thought as he tortured his only brother by showing him all of the clan he had killed. Slow, red, burning images to meet his eyes.

Although, the elder Uchiha did not believe that he was the worst sibling in the world (not anymore, at least)—now that everything was planned out, he felt a little bit better. Sasuke would become strong through everything; he would become a legend. Itachi wanted this all for his little brother.

He was killing his family for Sasuke. He was leaving his home and village for Sasuke. He was doing everything and giving up everything for him, because the man sincerely loved that boy. Even at the very end, things would be as they used to be, even if only for a moment, he liked to think.

_(((and they would be.)))_

The Mangekyo nightmare ended, but the eyes stayed in place. Sasuke looked at him with odium and fear and so much detestation that it made the thirteen-year-old feel almost sick. But he spoke anyways:

"Foolish little brother… If you wish to kill me, then hate me, detest me and live in an unsightly way… Run. Run, and cling to life. Then when you have the same 'eyes' as I do, come to me."

And it killed Itachi to speak those words. But it hurt him again when he saw the faint look in his brother's eyes: vehemence. The teenager blinked, and it still wasn't gone. The little one blinked, and then fell.

Itachi blinked once more, and felt tears rushing down his face as he watched his beloved sibling. _This shouldn't have been. I'm so sorry, Sasuke._

Years later the elder Uchiha would wondered if it would have made a difference if Sasuke had seen him crying.


	5. my last breath is spent

**rambling:** i realize that itachi visited the third hokage to tell him to protect sasuke or something like that before he left—i didn't feel like adding that in here. andandand totally listening to etf when writing this.

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><p><strong>o5.<strong>_ i'd like to say goodbye, but i can't. so goodbye now, goodbye forever. goodbye until my last breath is spent._

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><p>This was his last day in Konohagakure for a <em>long<em> time and the teenager was morose. Not because of him leaving Konoha, but because he was leaving his little brother—and he couldn't say goodbye. Not in the way that he wanted to, he meant.

The ceaseless what-ifs flooded his mind as he flew past the grand gates. Itachi had to have said something wrong; he had to have done something wrong. (_Oh, like slaying your entire family?_ a voice drawled in the back of his mind.) Was there anything he could have done or said to Sasuke to make it any easier? What if he what he did was wrong for the village?—what if he never killed them all?

"Shut _up_," he told himself through grit teeth, pain and sorrow mixed.

But where was he going to go _now_? He had a withered past and a blurry future. There was nothing now. _No,_ he thought, _there is still Sasuke. He's still alive._ And he was going to kill Itachi one day. That was all that the elder brother knew at that time.

_(((sasuke was all that really mattered—ever. his foolish little brother was his twisted lifeline, until said sibling killed him himself.)))_

The reason why _Itachi_ grew so strong over the years that he was a missing-nin was not because he was hateful, but because he wanted Sasuke to be stronger than _him_. And if he was stronger than his older brother, than Sasuke was something, indeed. (It was nothing short of a hypocritical contradiction.)

Lest any forget, Uchiha Itachi and Uchiha Sasuke were best friends once. And they would perpetually be brothers, connected by blood and a love the latter wouldn't realize until it was too late.

—And it _would_ be too late.

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><p><strong>rambling2:<strong> beeteedubs, "clay hearts" isn't one of my top priorities right now. don't expect much.**  
>rambling3:<strong> & happy (belated) independence day~!


	6. beginning of the end

**ramblings:** so, this is finished. and this chapter is nothing special; i just wanted to add it in there. xD thanks for reading! now, review. it's the last chapter.

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><p><strong>o6. <strong>_now feast your eyes upon the beginning of the end. let the words eat you alive—now, ask yourself: were you wrong all along?_

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><p>we do not know him.<p>

.

.

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we do not know how he felt.

.

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we do not know how he feels.

.

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so who are we to judge him?

.

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when all he did was protect his brother,

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and save us all?

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he is a superhero,

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veiled by the visage of a villain.

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he is the prodigy, turned prodigal.

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if only it didn't have to be him.

_**end.**_


End file.
